Fantasy Football World Cup 2022
Well, we never thought we’d be writing a World Cup article in November… never mind one about a World Cup in Qatar, but hey, money speaks, evidently. Whatever your feelings about this one it is here and it is happening so we may as well embrace it. After all… #footballscominghome
The good (?) people at FIFA, or to give them their new name FIFA+, have launched a fantasy game and as you’d expect we are all over it. The following is a run down of where to find it, how to play it, the fixtures, the deadlines and most importantly how you can join in the fun in the FF247 Regs League.
After that this article will act as a month long World Cup version of Live Match Chat. Much like the Champions League one does. In fact the whole game is very Champions League-like. If you have played that you will get the gist of this one pretty quickly, if not do not worry as we shall attempt to talk you through the basics below. Failing that just pop a comment in the chat below and we shall answer any query for you, regardless of how daft!
BTW… it’s coming home 
The Game Itself
You can access the game here – https://play.fifa.com/fantasy-classic/
The FF247 Regs League
We are only running the one league and there is only one way to enter it…
Please email us on contact@fantasyfootball247.co.uk if you want the code for this one.
You must include your FF247 username and your FIFA+ Fantasy World Cup team name in the email, or we will simply ignore it.
The purpose of this one is that it is for folk who are on the FF247 forum regularly and taking part in the regular FF247 WC chat. Please don’t try to join if you aren’t. We will know, and we will boot you out.
The Regs Standings
This will be updated as we go along, as per the CL ones.
The Basics
You can access all of the rules themselves here but the main points are as follows…
Scoring
The scoring is similar to FPL only that keepers get 9 for scoring a goal (may as well be 25?!), defenders 7 and mids and fwds 5 each. Mids get 1 point extra for both 2 key passes and for every 3 tackles. Fwds get 1 point for every 2 shots on target.
Chips aka Boosters
Worth noting as there are a couple of odd ones…
‘Matchdays’
The stages are split into 7 different ‘matchdays’…
Players per team
As per CL this increases through the stages…
Amount of transfers
Likewise there are different stages to this…
Captain and Sub Rules
Those who are familiar with CL rules can skip this bit but for those who aren’t then this is super important. Basically you can keep changing your Captain Armband to another player who is yet to play, within each Matchday, until you land on one that you are happy with, as long as you do it before the next players game begins. Likewise with subs you can bring one in to replace a player who has played, but has perhaps not done as well as you would have liked. It’s basically rolling the dice until you are happy to stick.
MD5 Fixtures – QF’s (and possible SF’s)
Let’s see if Mbappe will be enough for France. Without Benzema, Pogba, Nkunku and Kante might be a bit difficult.
Well a 2nd massive upset on the cards today? Aussies take shock lead
With L Hernandez badly injured now, France will struggle.
No they turn it around. With mbappe not doing anything of course
Woohooo!!!! Ochoa saving me today! That penalty save was huge for me and Mexico.
Nice. Mbappe did something for me. I see not many have him. Kept c on kane though.
All 4 games today have been quite mediocre….EPL matches are much more exciting than these.
The Saudi vs Argentina match will go down in history books. Nothing mediocre in current match. Middle 2 matches could have been better.
Doesn’t particularly help that the games are all going on for about 120 minutes! By the time we start to add on extra-time and pens in the knockouts it’ll be like watching an American Football game
Some group games are always going to be mediocre, unfortunately. There was a prominent journo on the radio yesterday suggesting that the WC is a step up from the CL. I’m sorry, it’s just not. It may be in prestige but certainly not in quality. They’ve just said now that Australia have 7 players from the SPL and half the rest play in the Championship. England and France are bringing players off the bench from Man City and Bayern.
Well not everyone can play in the EPL. Or La liga or Bundesliga. Or serie A. What makes a team like Saudi Arabia whose entire team playing in their domestic Saudi League beating an Argentina team playing for top teams in Europe, extremely memorable that will be remembered forever.
Who will remember that ManCity lost to Brentford at home 1 or 2 yrs from now? And will anyone really watch crystal Palace vs bournemouth for eg?
Also for these tinier football nations be it iran, Tunisia or Costa Rica just participating in WC will be highlight of their career. If they win or make it out of group even happier for them.
MY BUDGET BREAKER PLAN
(ab)using the WC and transfer rules for GW2/3.
Firstly a reminder of the rules:
GW2 starts at 3am Friday (midnight UK time) so the WC needs to be activated between then and before the start of the Wales Iran game.
Transfers between players neither of whom has played take place in the same week. If either has played, the original player stays in the GW2 squad and the incoming players starts in GW3.
So, the plan is:
1. Firstly you need to formulate your GW3 team (yes GW3). That is what you are aiming to finish GW2 with.
2. Aim to choose expensive players who play later in the week and cheapos who play early (that’s a normal tactic anyway to make best use of the subs)
3. Now consider that we will split our GW2 team into two halves. We are going to spend the majority of our money on expensive players who play early in GW2.
4. Once these players have played and their points locked in, they can be transferred to the cheaper players we want for GW3
5. At the same time, with the money generated, we will dump our rubbish enablers for the more expensive players as mentioned in item 2 and get their points for both GW2 and GW3.
One warning though, your final captain needs to be a late player. A glitch in the system means that if you transfer out your captain who has played you appear to keep his points but lose his captain double.
So much complication. Think i ll just play the regular way. WC probably for md3.. And just make 2 transfers for md2 before md2 starts
GM, why midnight UK time?
The last game of MD1 Brazil vs Serbia kicks off at 7 PM and even with extra time should finish before 10 PM.
The first game of MD2 Wales vs Iran is at 10 AM the following morning….
According to the rules GW2 starts at midnight “AST” whatever that is. I thought it was GMT but it looks like local time so 11pm UK
*9pm so effectively when the last game finishes
This is an extra confusion added to the rest.
AST is Atlantic time
I saw that but it’s Arabia standard time
MD2 starts only at midnight AST., means UK time 9pm on 24th.
But I did not understand much about selling locked players. I thought the last match of MD2 is POR – URU. Once that starts, all players will be locked and I can sell all 15 of them to bring-in entire MD3 squad. Is there any issue in that?
This money generation is quite confusing and I assume it will be fixed to avoid over budget teams.
No, the last game is Brazil vs Serbia
There’s no issue at all in selling all 15 and getting a new team during the last match of GW2.
The thing that I found is by having Kane and a 4.5 mid for GW1, you can use the in play transfers to swap them for a 4.5 fwd and KDB. Kane’s points are locked in because he has played but KDBs transfer takes effect immediately as he hasn’t (and neither has the player transferred out) so you also get his points in GW1. The GW2 plan is just an extension of that.
I thought Asian Standard Time
Haha. Asia is a huge continent and has many time zones. And i was also wondering why Atlantic standard time. Never heard of it.
“the first match of the FIFA World Cup kicks off at 19:00pm AST on 20th November, 2022.” ————- this means AST = QATAR time. The first match started on 16:00pm UK time (3 hours behind).
I don*t know who coined AST in that Rules section, they could have simply put Qatar time.
Otieno
Thx for this, you’ve clearly put in some serious research and grateful you’re sharing this with us.
I’ve read it through a couple of times and tbh I just can’t get my head around it?
Also with the buggy website and super slow updates, not sure I can trust it’ll work.?
Hope it works out for you tho.
Good luck.
@Otieno, finally understood what you mean. This means I have to build both MD2 and MD3 desired teams where cheapos in MD2 set to play late (whom will be sold for costly players who will play late in MD2 and MD3) and cheapos in MD3 set to play early.
This is risky if they fix it now. Anyway, I assume most of the top teams will be rotating in MD3 except may be Argentina. Possibly we do not need loads of budget in MD3. Lets see what happens in rest 4 groups.
They will only rotate if top spot guaranteed even if they lose last game.
Like if England or France on 6 and other teams on 1 or 2 pts.
Who would have thought that after 8 games donkey would join Saka, Valensia and Teremi with a brace in the Golden Boot race
R u talking about Giroud? He is a class player. Just needs service.
Yes Giroud, he was largely overlooked and selected by just 2%
I thought of picking Donkey, ended with Micky. I did not expect AUS to be so bad in the air.
Saw a comment from Kop earlier. I have to agree, this WC fantasy is absolutely pathetic, how can we know what to do if the organisers don’t know what to do either ? All this sell a player/get a player during the matchday and your budget being more than allowed, whats going on ?